


three's a crowd

by sarah_x



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Bisexuality, Character Study, Death, Gen, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarah_x/pseuds/sarah_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams about warm fingers against his arm and a cold, shaking hand clutching his tightly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three's a crowd

**Author's Note:**

> For Hanna.

There is a nurse at the hospital, after what the papers dub his "big burn". He keeps the paparazzi out of his room and brings Harvey books to read, old scruffy paperbacks worn from years of use. Folded at the edges. He tries to apologise for them saying, "Just because something's damaged doesn't mean it's no good." and this kind of fucks Harvey up because he's got a feeling this man - this boy, really - isn't talking about the books. 

His name is Casper, he's a blonde and feels like a warm summer's day. Harvey begins to enjoy his presence, he seems to brighten up everything in the room and makes being stranded in a hospital bed less aggravating than it should be. His laugh is light and soft and he's friendly to everyone he meets. He is adjusting Harvey's IV fluid one day when soft fingers brush his arm. The shiver that goes down Harvey's spine is unfamiliar and terrifying but not unwanted.

Harv takes notice of the nurse too and growls in his mind, "Why don't you just fuck him already?"

Two-Face accidentally kills him during his escape from the hospital, a stray bullet that was intended for the Bat but strikes the young man in his chest. He sees the hurt of betrayal in Casper's eyes as the light slowly fades for them - a supernova in miniature - and Harvey doesn't sleep properly for weeks.

****  
"It's not just vanity. It's not." He tells the Bat this, twin desert eagles pointed at the other man's skull, because he doesn't want people to think that everyone was right about him. That he was just a pretty boy DA in way over his head. That he cared more about being in the public eye than doing his job. That his looks were the centre fold of who he was. 

Maybe he says it to convince himself - his selves - rather than Batman. His other half, Harv, is whispering, "Of course it is."

"Harvey," The Bat replies, firm and with conviction. "I know."

He flips his coin and allows Batman to drag him back to Arkham. He can only hope whatever pills and psychobabble bullshit they have to feed him will work this time. 

****  
There is a girl in Arkham. Her name is Eva, she's schizophrenic and her cell is opposite Harvey's. She reminds him a little of his late wife. 

Her outbursts are rare but violent and she mostly keeps to herself, doesn't fight the doctors and orderlies when they push drugs into her like Harvey does but she resents them. He learns this when he eats lunch with her once, then twice and suddenly he discovers she is an only child with two mothers in Central City and that she loves comic books. She has another side, however. She could become distant and shut off and sometimes it was like she couldn't even hear him at all - too busy inside her own head to take notice of him.

If Casper had been his summer's day, Eva is his winter's night. Cold and mysterious, perhaps, but enticing all the same. 

Harvey has a breakdown in his cell. Harv is screaming in his head and he can't make him stop. The guards either don't notice or don't care. But she is there.

Her arm stretches out from the bars of her cell and she just waits for him to calm down. When he takes her hand, she squeezes it gently and speaks to him without fear. "It's okay. You're going to be okay."

Later that week, she is stabbed to death by another inmate during a riot orchestrated by himself and a few others. He doesn't try to escape for a long time after that. The doctors allow him to send flowers to Eva's mothers.

****  
Harvey slips up and tells the doctor that he's bisexual.

The doctor - a Dr. Greggory Portman who is a few years shy of retiring - spends the rest of their session trying to convince him that this recent development is just an extension of his obsession with duality and not something that Harvey should be embracing but repressing.

A sickness that needs to be cured.

Harvey stabs the man in the eye with the doctor's fountain pen and is dragged back to his cell with enough tranquillisers in his system to kill a small elephant. He dreams about warm fingers against his arm and a cold, shaking hand clutching his tightly. He swears for a second that they're in his cell with him, holding him, two young lives cut short by his hand. But that's probably just the tranquillisers.

Harvey Dent is a man with twice as many options but knows he'll never have even half of what normal, sane people get in their lifetimes.

Two-Face will never let him be happy.


End file.
